Lonicera nitida Red Tips - Box Honeysuckle

Lonicera nitida Red Tips is a new variety of Boxleaf Honeysuckle with a more spreading habit than the standard type, featuring splendid young shoots that are red to purple in spring. The red colour of the small leaves fades to shiny green in summer, and the foliage then takes on bronze shades in autumn due to the cold. This evergreen shrub is easy to grow and responds well to pruning.  More compact than the standard species, it is ideal for creating topiary or low hedges as an alternative to boxwood. It has faster growth, more colourful foliage, and proves to be more disease resistant.

The Red Tips Honeysuckle belongs to the Caprifoliaceae family. Its parent, Lonicer nitida, is a robust evergreen shrub native to the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. Red Tips is very easy to grow and hardy. It reaches an average height of 1.25 meters (4 feet 1 inches), but can grow up to 1.5 meters (4 feet 11 inches) if regularly pruned, even taller if left to grow freely. Its growth is quite fast, but it generally only requires pruning once per year depending on its growing conditions. The Red Tips Boxleaf Honeysuckle has a naturally dense and bushy habit, carried by fine and slightly arched branches. Its small, shiny, evergreen leaves are reddish-purple when they first emerge, green in summer, and more or less bronzed in autumn and winter. If left unpruned, it produces small, inconspicuous cream-white flowers in spring. The small purple fruits, toxic but appreciated by birds, are rarely seen in cultivation and only develop if the plant is not pruned.

Plant Lonicera nitida Red Tips in any well-drained soil that is not too dry, even chalky soil.  It prefers partial shade or light sun. Primarily a foliage plant, Boxleaf Honeysuckle tolerates severe pruning which should be carried out just after winter or after flowering. Allow 50 to 70 cm (19.7 to 27.6 in) of space between plants for hedge planting. This shrub is resistant to air pollution and also tolerates moderate drought once established. It is perfect for low hedges, large borders, or beautiful plant sculptures, trimmed into balls or pyramid shapes, both in the ground and in pots. This Boxleaf Honeysuckle can also be left to grow freely in woodland areas.